DTCC Connection

DTCC’s Legal Entity Identifier Service Surpasses 200,000 LEIs

In 2015, The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation’s (DTCC) Global Markets Entity Identifier (GMEI) Utility grew the number of registrations by 24%, surpassing 200,000 globally-accepted entities, up from 161,000 at yearend 2014. This impressive growth underscores the industry’s confidence in the DTCC’s longstanding ability to improve transparency, efficiency and risk mitigation in the global marketplace.

Currently representing approximately 50% of the global market share with legal entity identifier (LEI) issuance in 184 jurisdictions, the GMEI Utility is the largest Local Operating Unit (LOU) by far, more than three times larger than its nearest competitor.

The GMEI Utility assigns a unique, universal standard LEI to any organization or firm involved in a financial transaction globally. It was developed in response to the financial crisis of 2008 after governments and regulators called for new financial market regulation. The GMEI Utility has been endorsed as an LOU by the Regulatory Oversight Committee (ROC), a global group of regulators established by the Group of 20 (G20) and the Financial Stability Board (FSB). The ROC oversees the Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF), which was established in 2015 to continue to develop and operate the Global LEI System (GLEIS).

The GMEI Utility continues to create partnerships in order to attract and retain LEI business from around the world. The Utility established global partnerships to support LEI registration in Sweden with NordLEI, in Luxembourg with LuxCSD, and in Canada with The Canadian Depository for Securities. In addition, the GMEI Utility and CUSIP Global Services (CGS) have executed an important four-year agreement extending a partnership that began in 2013.

The GMEI Utility continues to implement functional enhancements to its service that offer operational efficiency to the industry and which differentiates it from its competitors. Two of the most important upgrades in 2015 include:

The addition of export to Excel functionality, allowing users to filter and export record
sets in a preformatted Excel file, making required LEI renewal as quick and easy as
possible for clients.

The establishment of a multi-year subscription model that allows clients to pay in advance for multiple years of renewals, greatly reducing client overhead while ensuring they remain compliant with regulatory requirements to annually renew their LEI information.

“PIMCO is very pleased to be the first user of the GMEI Utility’s new multi-year subscription model,” said Cynthia Meyn, Executive Vice President and Head of PIMCO's U.S. Operations. “Use of the service ensures PIMCO’s compliance with renewal requirements, provides vast operational efficiencies and ultimately lowers our overall renewal costs.”

In addition to these enhancements, the GMEI utility also began cross product collaborations with Omgeo ALERT for LEI issuance. The team will continue to identify opportunities to bring additional value to clients by further integrating LEIs with existing DTCC services such as Avox, the Global Trade Repository and Clarient.

“With its strong customer focus and the award-winning support from the Wrexham validation team, 2016 promises to be another year of solid growth and market leadership for the GMEI Utility,” said Ron Jordan, Managing Director, Data Services, DTCC.